Snuff Out a Thousand Suns
Arc 1: Chapter 7
Zim sighed irritably. It had been five days since the Massive had picked him up, and while staying in the healing quarters was an immense step up from the Dib’s basement, it was also horrendously boring. No one else was there but the medical drones, and they were too busy to talk to Zim much. It was always so quiet. Nothing but the noise of the machines to keep him company. Gaz hadn’t stopped by, but Zim had expected that. He could vaguely remember Tallest Flurn visiting the first night he’d been there, and telling him that she’d been given a mass of work by Tallest Shtirk to test her capabilities. He’d had quite a bit of painkillers in his system at the time, though; so he wasn’t entirely certain how much of what he remembered from the visit had actually happened.
He sighed again, flitting his eyes around the room. White walls. White floors. White machinery. White beds. White ceiling. No windows, even, to break the constant white up a bit. Zim couldn’t even sit up without being hit by a crushing dizzy spell. He’d underestimated how useful his antennae were to balance, and now, with one missing, he couldn’t attempt anything close to a vertical position. And to top everything off, it had been too long since Dib had taken the regeneration controls out of his Pak, and so nothing Zim had lost would grow back. One of the drones had mentioned something about Vort having excellent prosthetic antennae, but Zim was sure they’d probably be extremely pricey. It wasn’t like the business would be thriving, anyway. It wasn’t often that an Irken had their Pak’s regeneration software disabled for as long as he had.
Zim frowned, closing his eyes. He may as well get some more sleep. There wasn’t much he could do lying down, and he didn’t expect to be having any visitors anytime soon.
“MASTER!!!”
Zim’s eyes snapped open as a small, gray body launched itself onto his abdomen. He gasped in pain, lifting his head a bit and being greeted by a large grin and big blue-green eyes. “GIR?”
The robot’s smile widened, and he wrapped his arms around the Irken’s head. “You been gone so long! I made pretty dresses for mah tacos! Wanna see?!”
Zim grunted in pain as GIR’s grip tightened, and pushed angrily at the robot’s chest. “No, GIR! Release me!”
Surprisingly, GIR actually let go of Zim’s head, settling into a sitting position at the foot of the bed. He opened his chest, pulling out a burrito wrapped in some hideous floral-print material, and waved it around happily. “This’s Mary! I got her from the Tallest!!” He laughed happily, stuffing it into his mouth.
“That’s quite nice, GIR. Now get off Zim’s feet,” the Invader growled. The robot’s only reply was to tilt his head to the side, and pull another burrito from his chest. He held it out with a large, open-mouthed grin, dripping beans onto Zim’s chest. Zim grimaced, taking the snack. He’d never been particularly fond of burritos, even when made with Irken ingredients, but it did seem more appetizing at the moment than what the drones had been feeding him. Plus, it was the surest thing to keep GIR even remotely calm. “Thank you, GIR,” he mumbled, taking a small bite of the offending wrap.
GIR giggled madly, jumping off the bed and running across the room. “Hi lady!” he screamed, diving out of Zim’s view. A shriek was followed by a crash, and more screams. Zim smiled to himself, continuing to nibble at the burrito. This was more like it.
~-~-~
Flurn stood outside the healing quarters, listening to the medical drones screaming and trying to escape the insane robot he’d unleashed on them. The violet Tallest couldn’t help but feel a bit guilty about that, but the look of contentment he could see Zim wearing from the doorway was more than enough to make up for it. He smiled to himself, feeling a warmth deep in his squeedlyspooch. After a few moments, he realized that he’d been staring at Zim for nearly five minutes, and shook his head. This wasn’t good. He couldn’t let himself fall in love with Zim again. With a small sigh, he turned and left the hallway, resolving to keep as far away from the smaller Irken as he could until he and Shtirk decided what to do with him.
After wandering the ship for a few minutes, Flurn came across the room they’d given Gaz. He paused for a moment, deciding whether he should check in and see how she was doing with her test, or leave her be. When his thoughts started drifting back to Zim, the Tallest decided watching her work would probably be a welcome distraction, so he knocked and opened the door.
“What do you want?” the girl asked. She was lying on her bed, playing her GameSlave and facing away from the door.
“Just thought I’d see how you’re doing with fixing all that stuff Shtirk gave you,” he said, glancing around the room. “You paint in here?” The walls were a rather sloppy-looking blackish-purple, rather than the pink they’d been when she arrived on the ship.
Gaz paused her game, rolling her eyes and sitting up. “One: I’m done with all that. Been done for two days. Two: Yes, I painted. I hate pink. Can I go back to my game now?”
Flurn walked over to the pile of fixed equipment Gaz had made near the door. “That only took you three days? Impressive.” He picked up a mini-television, flicking it on and flipping through various channels. “You gotta be more respectful when Shtirk comes in, though. I don’t really mind that much, but his ego’s the size of Planet Blorch. He wasn’t kidding about the airlock thing.”
“Whatever.”
Flurn shrugged, turning the TV off and setting it back on the pile. “Okay. You still playing Piggy Hunters?”
“Yeah,” the girl growled. “I think one of your stupid drones stole the rest of my games. I can’t find them.”
“I’ll ask around, if you want. See if I can find anything,” Flurn offered, walking back towards the door. Gaz nodded briefly, mashing away at her GameSlave’s buttons. The Tallest gave a quick nod in return, slipping out of the room.
~-~-~
“It just isn’t fair, Fleem,” Shtirk growled. “He left Zim rounds ago. We’ve been together for five! Less than three hours, and he was already running off to go back to that defect’s side.”
Fleem sighed. “Shtirk, don’t do this...” She stood up, crossing the room and wrapping her arms around the male from behind. “Come on. Not now.”
Shtirk shrugged Fleem’s arms off, pressing his lips together angrily. “When should I do it, then? You’re the only one who knows about all this. Who else am I supposed to go to about this, huh?”
“You can talk to me about this, but can it not be when we’re together like this? Please?” Fleem asked quietly, sitting back down on her bed.
“Together like what?” the Tallest barked. “You know for a fact that I don’t care about you. We wouldn’t even be mates if you weren’t the Taller.” He sighed, shaking his head.
Fleem pulled a dark orange shirt over her head. “If you hate this damn tradition so much, why don’t you just abolish it? You are the Tallest, after all.”
“We’ve been over this, Fleem. In order to pass any laws, Flurn and I first have to agree on what we want, and then get it past the Control Brains; and they won’t budge on any old traditions, especially when it comes to mating. Small can’t mate with Tall, the Tallest mates with the Taller, Invaders have their genitals removed before leaving Devastis to prevent them mating with the species they should be conquering, and so on.”
“You know,” Fleem snapped, pulling a pair of dark brown pants up and tying them closed, “I think you’re only so upset about this because Zim isn’t Small anymore. There’s no law against a Tallest taking another mate aside from the Taller; and co-Tallest, in this case; so you’re just scared he’s going to go back to Zim, and you’ll only get to be with him when Zim isn’t around.” She spun to face him, glaring. “If you want to bitch about this so badly, then go bitch to Flurn, and leave. Me. Out of it.” She shook her head angrily, turning and sweeping from the room. Shtirk snarled, slammed a fist into the wall, then hissed at the resulting pain in his knuckles.
~-~-~
Zim hummed quietly to himself, sucking at a Licky-Stik GIR had snuck him. It had been another week since arriving on the Massive, and the medical drones had been helping him with a bit of some old practice called ‘physical therapy’. It was an out-of-date technique, thanks to the Paks healing Irkens’ wounds as quickly as they did, but seemed to actually be quite useful in Zim’s case. He was slowly gaining back the ability to stand up without falling over, and the female drone insisted that he would probably be up and about within a month if all went well.
Currently, he could hear said drone yelling, along with a few others, at GIR. Again. Seemed he’d gotten into a cabinet full of medicine and eaten anything he could reach, and was now projectile vomiting in the medical drones’ living quarters.
The Invader smirked to himself at the thought. It was always entertaining to see someone else having to deal with the robot.
The Gaz had been in to visit Zim a couple of times. He’d been impressed to hear how quickly she’d completed Tallest Shtirk’s test work. It had also been rather entertaining to listen to her complain when Shtirk had made her start wearing a technician’s uniform. Gaz had been quite vocal about her opinion that the uniform was ‘The most hideous thing she had ever been forced to wear in her entire life’, and her wishes to change back into her cargo pants and t-shirt.
A crash came from the drones’ quarters, and GIR came running out, diving under Zim’s bed and giggling madly. Two female drones and one male came out after him, looking absolutely furious. “Invader, can you please control your SIR unit?! It’s going to take us days to clean our quarters, and we’ll have to buy replacements for all the medicine it ruined!” the male growled.
Zim shrugged, biting the Licky-Stik in half and chewing noisily. “GIR doesn’t seem to understand orders. Never has. You’ll just have to learn to deal with him, as Zim did.”
One of the female drones sighed. “And how do you deal with it?”
“Give him tacos, television, and hope that’s enough to hold his attention. Not much else you can do, really.”
The other female drone hissed angrily. “If you can’t control it, we’re going to lock it out of this part of the ship. We can’t keep dealing with this!”
Zim frowned at that. “Tallest Flurn already told you to let him stay with Zim. Your threats do nothing to threaten me.”
The drone gave another hiss at that, glaring at the giggling mass of metal peeking out from under the bed. “I hate your robot. I hate it!”
“Go on hating him all you like, drone. Zim does not care for your opinion. Now go. You should start cleaning your quarters before the smell sets in and your carpets stain, shouldn’t you?”
The other female drone sighed, rubbing between her antennae. “Just try to control it a little, won’t you? Do what you can. Okay?” She nodded to the others, turning and walking away from Zim’s bed. “Come on. He’s right; we should be getting that cleaned as quickly as we can.” The other drones nodded reluctantly, glaring at the Invader, before slowly starting back towards their rooms.
GIR stuck more of his head out from under the bed, making eye contact with his master, and the two shared a grin.
~*~*~
I don’t own Invader Zim. This is obvious. If I were Mr. Vasquez, I’d be too busy vomiting out of every orifice on my body from the sheer thought of Zim having a sexual relationship with any of the other characters to be typing this right now.
Roar! The first arc is nearly over. Enjoy being on the Massive while you still can, folks. And hey! Zim’s little friendly from the past has grown up to be the Taller. Sweet stuffs, huh? And yes; I’m aware that the idea of having a Taller to accompany the Tallest is completely unoriginal and lazy storytelling. However, I also do not care. So deal with it. Hahaha!
Also, a final note: I’ve made some changes to terms used in the Irken calender. Years are ‘rounds’, and I’m going through past chapters to make them match. I don’t remember what all I’ve mentioned from their calender, but there’s an explanation of it in the next chapter. If I’ve just confused you all even more than I’m sure I usually do, ignore this bit of the note, and move on. That’d probably be for the best.
Leave a review before you go, would ya? Especially you people on AFF! I haven’t gotten anything since chapter 3 from you guys! D8